| April 2006 |
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
| 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
| 9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
| 16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
| 23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
| 30 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jul May |
 Subscribe with Bloglines
|
|
|
Intelligent Networks • Smart Objects • Design for Humans |
 |
|
|
| Wednesday, April 26, 2006 |
 |
Test again, and again...
5:33:31 PM
|
|
| Sunday, July 10, 2005 |
|
| Monday, July 04, 2005 |
|
NOTE: Ambient Informatics was a sponsor of this research [permalink]
End Users Know What They Want from RFID Middleware The field of RFID middleware is still young. Technology vendors are feeling their way around and some still do not have a clear idea of what RFID middleware should do.
But end users know what they want.
Venture Development Corporation (VDC) recently put together a report about RFID middleware. Frontline Solutions has the story:
"At a high level, requirements are across the map," said Mike Liard, analyst at VDC. "It really depends on what they want to do."
The market for RFID software is expected to have the fastest compound annual growth rate of any other RFID segment through 2008, according to VDC's research. The overall RFID market reached $1.7 billion in 2004, and is expected to grow 36% annually through 2008, reaching $5.9 billion. While the hardware segment will have an average growth rate of 27.6%, and services will grow at a 47.8% clip, software will have a CAGR of 59.8%.
According to VDC, five middleware functions dominated the end user want lists:
- Provide a consistent interface for the RFID interrogator infrastructure. Standard interfaces--human, machine, network, application--do not exist across various RFID interrogator solutions.
- Data filtering and transport. Similar to the lack of standard interfaces, users cite the varied methods used to filter, compile, and route RFID data traffic as a key challenge during the implementation and integration process. Users are looking to RFID middleware to account for these differences, and resolve them in a consistent manner.
- Manage the RFID reader/interrogator infrastructure. Key functions cited by users and evaluators included local and remote monitoring, upgradeable software/configuration, and remote power on/off.
- Support for multiple host platforms requesting RFID data. The most often cited platform challenges included: warehouse management systems (WMS), order entry/ order management systems (OMS), transportation management systems (TMS), logistics management systems (LMS), supply chain management systems (SCM), and data warehouses.
- Support for legacy systems.
"Right now, core products are meeting the basic needs of data aggregation and data filtering and routing," Liard said. "As users better understand the business value of RFID, they'll be calling for more features and functionality.
"Each application is unique," he continued. "It's tough to develop off-the-shelf software when everyone is just figuring this stuff out. People are still feeling their way around."
[The RFID Weblog]
8:47:10 PM
|
|
Keeping an Eye on Domestic Appliances
Innovators have long sought areas in the home that technology could improve. With advances in microprocessors and connectivity, companies such as Control4 are making those visions a reality. Control4 and the South Korean telecom outfit SK Telecom have been using ZigBee technology to facilitate wireless control of automated household items, such as a television or an iron. Ember CEO Jeff Gramer says lower prices and ZigBee's "mesh radio" system's flexibility, which automatically reconfigures the network when a device is added or removed, has boosted its popularity. Gramer says, "The reason that it is really starting to take off in the home is that the cost of a ZigBee solution is under $5." However, competition has come from abroad, as the Danish company Zensys has developed a rival technology called Z-Wave, which the company offers for roughly half of ZigBee's price. Each company plans to ship 1 million units this year. Aside from internal competition in the market, promoters of household automation will have to demonstrate the relevance of their technology. Analysts have identified security, health care, and energy conservation as the three most likely avenues to mainstream wireless household automation. Non-invasive monitoring of the elderly and infirmed could enable them to live independently for longer, and alerts of wasted energy would clearly save consumers money on their utility bills. Despite lingering concerns over the ease with which the automated household could be managed and whether existing nodes are strong enough for certain complex security applications, developers are aiming for the sky. "If every household did have 100 or so of these devices, then you get up to the billions very quickly," says Gartner's Nick Jones.
[ACM TechNews]
Links:
Zensys Z-Wave
Control4
ZigBee Alliance
8:39:59 PM
|
|
| Wednesday, June 29, 2005 |
|
Warp Speed for Wireless Networks
As new technologies for wireless networks race to speeds significantly faster than Wi-Fi, a gold-rush mentality has created a fiercely competitive market that, having yet to agree on even the most basic standards for the future, will provide users with a dizzying array of options. While technologies such as Intel's new WiMax seeks to overtake Wi-Fi, the battle is also on for the future of short-distance connectivity, as at least six alternatives to Bluetooth are in the works. However, next year's debut of 802.11n is poised to increase current Wi-Fi speeds tenfold, so supplanting its market share will not be easy. "Because Wi-Fi was so popular, it takes away a lot of the demand for other technologies," says analyst Allen Nogee, citing its user-friendly simplicity. MIMO, a radio technology popular among cellular networks, is one contender in the battle to overtake Wi-Fi. MIMO promises high-quality, cell network video, and may be an alternative to Ethernet connections, said Airgo CEO and MIMO inventor Greg Raleigh. Still, WiMax's 30-mile network capacity may give it an edge in sparsely populated settings. In the short range market, ZigBee technology, supported by Freescale and Analog Devices, may win out as it supports a wide spectrum of household applications, such as remotely transmitting readings from a utility meter and powering a home theater system. The one hope for cooperation in the market may be efforts such as Intel and Freescale's initiative to fuse multiple technologies onto a single chip. Still, companies such as Dell, among others, remain cautious, and are opting to wait to see which technologies drop off before they choose the one to endorse.
[ACM TechNews]
12:38:16 PM
|
|
| Tuesday, June 07, 2005 |
|
Making SMART Homes Smarter
Juan Carlos Augusto with the University of Ulster's School of Computing and Mathematics seeks to further "smart homes" technology through the application of ambient intelligence. He says houses equipped with sensors can detect movement as well as determine its cause, and the information gathered by the technology can be analyzed at a remote location and used to help the house's occupants. For example, monitoring medical issues is essential to people who live by themselves; the technology could spot when elderly residents are in trouble and alert the proper people or authorities, as well as diagnose health problems before they get too serious. In addition, the technology could bolster building security by detecting mysterious movements. Augusto, an artificial intelligence expert, is working on software that can analyze the numerous goings-in picked up by sensors at a remote site. He says, "Individual sensors need to be complemented with software that can have a more holistic view of a given environment at any time as to anticipate potential risks or needs and act accordingly." Augusto says smart homes are "technologically and commercially viable" today, and will become even more advanced as new sensors and more complex designs are developed.
[ACM TechNews]
9:43:47 AM
|
|
| Wednesday, May 25, 2005 |
|
Sensacell : Modular Sensor Surface
The SENSACELL system is a new human interface technology for various interior and exterior applications and is scalable from a single module to 1000's of square feet. The modular sensor detects objects within 6" through materials such as glass, plastics, wood, tile, etc. The system's network can also interface with a computer...
[Future Feeder]
8:16:30 PM
|
|
Building Large-Scale ZigBee Systems With Web Services
Large-scale ZigBee systems can be enabled for network discovery, extraction, commissioning, configuration, management, security, event/rule logic, and data management applications via Web service "brokers," write Tendril Networks CEO Tim Enwall and Ember's Venkat Bahl. Application developers could tap a common suite of foundational software design and run-time tools and services offered through standards-based Web services. Service brokers can function as structured mechanisms to regulate communications, such as routing requests along node-to-application, node-to-node, and application-to-node pathways. With such software services, developers can immediately concentrate on application-specific material, the rules governing the physical environment, the data aggregation and synthesis necessary for effective decision making, and the human and computer communications to be relayed to facilitate the appropriate user outcomes. Moreover, if the developer is familiar with the ways in which the broker's services operate, then the developer only has to know what a ZigBee system is capable of. Knowing the various ins and outs of MEMS sensors, ZigBee mesh networking routing algorithms, wireless network reliability, node operating systems, internode networking stacks, protocols, and how they are integrated into the application is therefore unnecessary. A service broker must provide a logical abstraction layer that virtually maps out the network and its capabilities for the developer; a set of core services that allow the existing infrastructure and new network entries to be discovered, and that shield the network from the unsanctioned introduction of network components; a rules engine to enable an application's algorithms and hierarchical processing across a spectrum of networks; understandable, manageable, and optimized data flow as well as universal availability of preprocessed data throughout the enterprise; and simulation capability.
[ACM TechNews]
8:15:20 PM
|
|
Body Media : You will get sick. . . now..
Eric Teller's company, Body Media has tracked 132 years of human activity, including 44,533 minutes of jogging and 6,250 minutes of Ping-Pong through it's armband monitor. The company has sold 7,500 armband monitors which wirelessly record physiological data to be analyzed by 1,300 algorithms that figure out what that body is doing. Within [...]
[Future Feeder]
8:12:17 PM
|
|
| Monday, May 23, 2005 |
|
Nifty-sounding book/blog from IBM...Inescapable Data. Hmmm!
Cooking-up Start-ups. Inescapable Data (ID) isn't a cookbook for start-ups, but you could read it to find the ingredients for a host of new businesses. Start with the simple premise of Inescapable Data; that data sources can (and will) be converged...
[Inescapable Data]
7:52:11 PM
|
|
| Thursday, May 12, 2005 |
|
A Web of Sensors, Taking Earth's Pulse
Ecologists are planning to set up more than $1 billion worth of sensor web technology to study diverse environments with an eye toward saving the planet. Dr. Deborah Estrin with UCLA's Center for Embedded Network Sensing says the goal of such deployments is to create the ecological equivalent of MRI or CAT scans, while Dr. Alexandra Isern with the National Science Foundation (NSF) says sensor web technology is helping scientists understand "how different processes in the environment operate at different frequencies." Factors driving the sensor web wave include the support of institutions such as the NSF and the Defense Department, which have respectively financed planning and research into new sensor network deployments and the miniaturization of electronics to yield technologies such as motes and smart dust. Over 100 wireless motes, robots, computers, and cameras are linked into a network in California's wooded James Reserve to measure temperature, humidity, rainfall, soil moisture, and light levels, as well as track wildlife, plant growth, nesting activity, and the production of carbon dioxide in the soil. Other sensor web projects include RiverNet, which will use floating robots, wireless sensors, and distributed computers to track and improve the water quality of the Hudson River; EarthScope, an effort to study North America's continental formation and evolution to gain better insight into fault systems, earthquakes, mineral deposits, and volcanic activity; and Neptune, which involves the deployment of almost 2,000 miles of sensor, camera, and robot-equipped cables under the Pacific to study the ocean environment. Meanwhile, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) initiative's goal is to chart the spread of invasive species and predict shifts in the biosphere to augment land use and restoration strategies.
[ACM TechNews]
1:38:40 PM
|
|
A Vision of Terror
Intelligence officers stand to benefit from new visualization tools that enable them to generate unique representations of digital communications that could help map out terrorist activity. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has developed Starlight 3.0, a new generation of software that graphically displays the relationships and interactions between documents that contain text, images, video, and audio, for the Homeland Security Department. Starlight is a redesign of earlier software that permits interactive analysis of larger datasets, the jettisoning of irrelevant content, and the addition of new data streams as they come in, according to PNNL chief scientist John Risch. The software enables a fourfold increase in the volume of documents that can be analyzed simultaneously, and allows the concurrent opening of multiple visualizations, which Risch says lets users see the time as well as the location of an activity's occurrence. Another PNNL effort involves the continual augmentation of IN-SPIRE software for deriving meaning from large datasets and allowing users to explore the likelihood of alternative hypotheses, says National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC) director Jim Thomas, who says the software can search documents in multiple languages at the same time and permits the "discovery of the unexpected." Both Starlight and IN-SPIRE generate visualizations that graphically depict relationships between content by displaying them in multiple formats. Other organizations working on analytical software for the federal government include Intelligenxia, whose IxReveal software can track online message threads and provide answers to unasked queries, says Intelligenxia CTO Ren Mohan.
[ACM TechNews]
1:37:21 PM
|
|
| Wednesday, May 11, 2005 |
|
| Sunday, May 08, 2005 |
|
| Friday, May 06, 2005 |
|
RFID and WiFi, What a Combo.
Cisco has introduced a new device that combines RFID and WiFi. Its purpose? To track the location of assets. According to EE Times as reprinted over at InformationWeek:
"The Wireless Location Appliance 2700 is a $14,995 1U box that integrates RFID tagging with 802.11 access points, providing ways for central managers to locate and control assets.
Cisco is initially targeting health-care networks to use the locator system to monitor hospital and clinic equipment. Ann Sun, senior manager of wireless and mobility solutions, said she anticipates growing interest from manufacturers along with public-safety applications and similar markets where asset tracking is important.
The system can be used in conjunction with voice-over-IP infrastructure, but works best when VoIP has been extended to a voice-over-Wi-Fi environment.
One location system is used for each central enterprise site where aggregation and network policy enforcement is required. Wi-Fi access points gather received signal strength indicators (RSSI) from 802.11 devices and tags, and Cisco Lightweight Access Point Protocol (LWAPP) controllers serve to aggregate RSSI information."
Privacy advocates already object to Cisco's new offering. Their objection is that it could be used to track people.
Of course, if an employer wants to track employees, it doesn't need to spring the $15K for Cisco's box. The employer probably has enough technology out there today to get a pretty good handle on what employees are doing. [The RFID Weblog]
11:38:38 AM
|
|
| Thursday, May 05, 2005 |
|
An unusual title for an otherwise very good article on next generation
computing systems architecture...from the DB perspective.
A Call to Arms
Long anticipated, the
arrival of radically restructured database architectures is now finally at
hand.
"In a related
development, people building sensor networks have discovered that if you
view each sensor as a row in a table (where the sensor values make up the
fields in that row), it becomes quite easy to write programs to query the
sensors. What's more, current distributed query technology, when augmented
by a few new algorithms, proves to be quite capable of supporting highly
efficient programs that minimize bandwidth usage and are quite easy to code
and debug. Evidence of this comes in the form of the tiny database systems
that are beginning to appear in smart dust-a development that's sure to
shock and awe anyone who has ever fooled around with
databases.
Self-managing and always-up. Indeed, if every file system,
every disk, every phone, every TV, every camera, and every piece of smart
dust is to have a database inside, then those database systems will need to
be self-managing, self-organizing, and self-healing."
[ACM Queue]
12:10:51 PM
|
|
| Tuesday, May 03, 2005 |
|
The Time Traveler
Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00
UTC)
(event starts at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard,
MIT
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal
degrees)
What is it?
Technically, you would only need one
time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a
specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits
as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention
at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!
1:09:42 PM
|
|
| Monday, May 02, 2005 |
|
Sensor Data Are Spatial Data
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) President Mark Reichardt writes that all sensor data constitute spatial data because every sensor has a physical location, and this reasoning is a core tenet of OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) effort. SWE is a key element of the OWS-3 Interoperability Initiative for advancing OpenGIS Specifications through "hands-on" prototyping and testing. SWE's objective is to facilitate interoperable access to distributed, dissimilar sensors and sensor networks so that applications to discover, access, and combine sensor data from a wide variety of technologies and databases can be implemented. Reichardt says the publication of standardized descriptions of sensor capabilities, location, interfaces, and observations can be effected through XML-based text schemas, which Web brokers, clients, and servers can employ to facilitate automated Web-based discovery of sensors' presence as well as the evaluation of their properties. The XML schema provides sensor control interface information that enables communication with the sensor system, and offers a way to automatically produce far-reaching standard-schema metadata for sensor-generated data, allowing data in distributed archives to be discovered and interpreted. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's SensorNet requirements and the needs of other OGC members are helping drive the SWE specs' maturation, as well as reconcile OGC's Sensor Model Language with the IEEE 1451 "plug-n-play" sensor standard and mature the Sensor Alert Service via employment of the OASIS Common Alert Protocol. Reichardt says these examples illustrate how closer relationships between OGC and other standards bodies are helping the consortium reach its goals.
[ACM TechNews]
8:45:39 PM
|
|
Footnote to previous post: Related to my comments about John Thackera - another visionary, the late Ken Sharma (d.1999), used to always ask the group at the beginning of a meeting, "What is the purpose of this meeting?", "Are the right people in the room?" and finally "How do we know when we are done?".
I always liked that last one...
"How do we know when we are done?"
8:13:45 PM
|
|
IN THE BUBBLE: DESIGNING IN A COMPLEX WORLD
"We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if "tech" ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the ends it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we're unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how? In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff, and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now -- not in a remote science fiction future; it's not about, as he puts it, "the schlock of the new" but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can't. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology -- ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles -- above all, lightness -- inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation."
Right on. I attended the Doors of Perception conference November 14,15,16 of 2002 entitled"Flow" and have always valued Mr. Thackera's views and appreciated his approaches. He has been throwing out hints for years regarding the "purpose" - getting the right people in the room - and prompting them to look at design issues objectively around context:people and not just through the lenses of thier specific discipline or industry perspective. Now its his turn to talk. Listen-up.
Get it from Amazon, or your favorite bookseller.
7:11:03 PM
|
|
| Monday, April 25, 2005 |
|
Car Computers Track Traffic
A federally funded "smart highway" project headed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Infrastructure and Transportation Studies seeks to address gridlock by tracking traffic via a wireless network of cars equipped with global positioning system (GPS) devices. Motorists participating in a pilot project receive feedback from in-vehicle computers on a continuous basis. Each vehicle transmits drive-time data to a server once a minute; the server processes this information and extracts a picture of traffic around a radius of 40 miles, while speed is computed by monitoring progress between virtual checkpoints. Updates are relayed by the in-car computers, which give the driver directions and warnings via a synthesized voice. Rensselaer Center research director Al Wallace believes the system could be especially beneficial for mid- and small-sized cities bedeviled by rush-hour traffic, noting that its deployment would be less costly than setting up pole-mounted cameras or road sensors. The collection of data from road cameras, "black box" computer chips, and electronic toll tags has provoked fears of exploitation from privacy proponents. Rensselaer Center director George List says deactivating the GPS units are a simple way to avoid monitoring. Intelligent Transportation Society President Neil Schuster says transportation officials and private companies are investigating GPS and other technologies for upgrading traffic systems, while the auto industry is considering a wireless network for moving cars that could be hosted on federally dedicated spectrum.
[ACM TechNews]
10:38:29 PM
|
|
| Saturday, April 23, 2005 |
|
Overtly Smart Buildings
"Such schemes can be complex, however. They involve computer simulations tied into building control systems and updated by sensor feedback and performance data. Sensors keep tabs on virtually anything that can be monitored, whether mechanically, magnetically, electromagnetically, thermally, optically, chemically, biologically, or acoustically. And the conglomeration of sensors packed into intelligent buildings is increasingly accessed via wireless networks."
[Technology Research News]
6:30:14 PM
|
|
| Wednesday, April 20, 2005 |
|
This makes sense. More convergence is a good thing.
Interesting they use the word "convergence" - but it makes sense. Thats OK. The "Security Convergence" they evangelize is still a subset of what I have referred to previously as a "new convergence". The previous "convergence" has its origins in describing the pre-internet phenomena of digitization and "new media" (and we are already converged!). But it still works...
CSO Executive Editor Derek Slater introduces a special issue on convergence.
Taking Leadership to a New Level - An in-depth look at holistic security management and question whether the hurdles — such as cultural rifts, differing skill sets and terminology barriers - can, and should, be overcome.
The Convergence Momentum Theory - Why Resistance Is Futile. Underlying the growth of holistic security management are five other markers of convergence.
The Defining Moment - Achieving convergence has less to do with who reports to whom and more to do with accountability, leadership and yes — security.
8:13:45 AM
|
|
| Monday, April 18, 2005 |
|
Almost crushed by it's own hype, and desperation for a new new "must have" technology - any commercial "RFID Conference" or discussion is - by default - too narrowly focused.
Can't see the forest...Hammer/Nail syndrome...whatever the metaphor...RFID is simply a component (COTS) of a greater systems design approach - which does have a value proposition. As a stand-alone technology - RFID solves nothing.
Great brief from AMR:
It's like The RFID World Is Stuck in Neutral--Time for Someone To Put It in Drive
AMR Research attended the recent RFID Journal LIVE conference in Chicago and listened to the same presentations and messages again. The content is getting stale, and the market is in jeopardy of collapsing under its own weight if people don't start talking about the value of using RFID.
[AMR Research]
"...the percentage of end users in the audience was very small. The agenda featured the same cast of presenters that are touring the RFID circuit..."
8:27:07 AM
|
|
| Sunday, April 17, 2005 |
|
DICE : Distributed Interactive Command Element
This is an inevitable application of Ambient Informatics concepts. For better or worse - perhaps what we learn from this can will advance our capabilities and lead eventually to positive applications as demanded for peacetime applications in "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush.
DARPA has awarded Lockheed Martin with $1.4MM (a drop in the bucket as the article mentions) to "build a commander’s interface to make sense of data in a networked war zone".
[Red Herring]
9:46:00 PM
|
|
| Tuesday, April 05, 2005 |
|
The 23rd annual CHI 2005 Conference is running through Thursday, April 7, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland.
9:18:20 PM
|
|
| Wednesday, March 23, 2005 |
|
The Rise of Smart Buildings
IT and building automation systems (BAS) experts say their two worlds are merging with the initial development of Web-based control standards and migration to IP networks; innovative building operators and BAS companies are already using IP and Web technologies to more effectively manage their heating, air conditioning, lighting, and other building-control functions. As more functions move to the IT infrastructure, experts predict BAS will become another customer of the IT department, much as accounting or other functions rely on IT staff. The migration to IP networks is similar to that of telephony's current move to IP, but as sensors, security cameras, actuators, and other devices become connected, they will also communicate as peers via Web services; open standards are the basis for this integration, and will also enable integration with other business systems such as accounting. The OASIS Open Building Information Exchange (OBIX) committee has been working since April 2003 to create standard building-control system interfaces for Web deployment, a draft discovery service for plug-and-play BAS devices, and an alarm service for automated settings. If the initiative is successful, OBIX-related Web services could outnumber all other Web services combined, says OBIX Chairman Toby Considine. There are still a number of obstacles for BAS integration into the IT infrastructure, including reticence on the part of BAS companies to move away from proprietary technology, lack of awareness among IT professionals, and standards. Security is also an issue, and Yale University placed its new IP-based BAS on a separate, parallel network protected from the general Internet by nonroutable IP addresses. Control-system companies have no idea about directory-enabled security, which is especially worrisome considering some of these systems control building access, says Kenmark Group CEO Mark Kendall..
[ComputerWorld]
8:32:03 PM
|
|
| Thursday, March 17, 2005 |
|
Wireless works wonders for manufacturing firms
"Manufacturers are getting closer to where demand and supply are more synchronous," says Bob Parker, an analyst with IDC. "We're seeing the emergence of RFID and sensor networks as the means for collecting the kind of data that is needed to make this synchronization happen."
Among those moving in this direction is General Motors, which has deployed RFID, 802.11 and sensor networks in several plants.
"The goal isn't just to merge manufacturing plants with IT (infrastructure)," says Pulak Bandyopadhyay, group manager for plant floor systems and control group in General Motors Corp.'s Manufacturing Systems Research Lab in Warren, Mich. "It's the collection of real-time data and what you do with data you've collected.".
[ITWorldCanada]
9:39:23 PM
|
|
| Wednesday, March 09, 2005 |
|
Laying Foundations for Component-Based
Software Markets
The European Commission is blazing the way for component-based software
engineering with several Information Society Technologies projects that
address technical, economic, and organizational aspects of commercialized
component-based software development. The COMPONENT+ project uses built-in
test capability to ensure that commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components
are compatible with the rest of the application. Component-based software
development is especially promising for smaller companies because it
promises time savings, but component incompatibility can negate those
benefits. COMPONENT+ built-in test components check run-time and interface
issues, and promise time savings of up to 50 percent once built-in test
components are integrated; European organizations such as Volvo and the
Swedish National Testing and Research Institute continue COMPONENT+ research
through the AGILE TESTS project. The Pervasive Component Systems (PECOS)
project aims to iron out deficiencies in component-based software
development for embedded systems, and takes into account non-functional
requirements for more complete behavioral testing in the design phase. The
PECOS development environment helps embedded systems developers check their
real-time system works as intended. Finally, the European COTS User Working
Group (ECUA) has advanced discussion of how to use COTS components among
European companies and other users worldwide; topics discussed include
component specification, management of component-based development, legal
issues, regulation, standards, and strategic partnerships. ECUA now includes
more than 160 organizations and the ECUA workshop has become an annual
event. |
10:53:39 PM
|
| Wednesday, March 02, 2005 |
|
Cornell Robotics Team Drives for the Gold
| A team of Cornell University students is working on
robot vehicles to compete in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's
Grand Challenge, a contest in which self-navigating vehicles will be
required to traverse an off-road course of roughly 170 miles without human
assistance. Two Cornell vehicles have been registered for the contest, and
both will integrate sensors and computers to perceive their surroundings and
pass that data on to a decision-making computer that controls steering. A
Light Detection and Ranging sensor will precisely measure distances to
objects by beaming electromagnetic waves at wavelengths close to those of
visible light, while radar sensors that emit waves of longer wavelengths
will be able to measure the distance to solid objects, even if visibility is
poor; finally, a two-camera stereo-vision sensor will provide a
three-dimensional picture that is "much cleaner" than radar, according to
sensor sub-team leader Aaron Nathan. Software on attached computers will be
used to filter the sensor input and incorporate the data into a model of the
outside environment that the steering software can more easily understand.
The steering software will employ a path-finding algorithm to ascertain the
vehicle's desired route, and send the appropriate direction and velocity
commands. The steering software will also be imbued with special
decision-making powers to help the vehicles deal with unusual situations,
such as determining that the vehicle has struck a rock and should therefore
back up. |
10:55:59 PM
|
|
Another One...
The Globus Alliance is developing fundamental technologies needed to build computational grids . Grids are persistent environments that enable software applications to integrate instruments, displays, computational and information resources that are managed by diverse organizations in widespread locations.
Related Coverage:
Ending the Grid Lock - MIT Technology Review
Related Consortium:
Enterprise Grid Alliance
...
10:55:56 PM
|
|
| Saturday, February 12, 2005 |
|
Ambient intelligence could transform embedded world, researcher says
Ambient intelligence is the next wave of information technology, driven by software and both enabled and constrained by nanoscale physics, according to a researcher speaking at the International Solid State Circuits Conference here.
Hugo De Man, senior research fellow at the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC, Leuven, Belgium), said the emergence of ambient intelligence will not require devices based solely on CMOS technologies. Instead, technologies emerging around CMOS, such as 3D packaging, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and polymer displays will also play key roles. Nanoscale biosensors could also connect electronics to biotechnology via IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol that enables every object on earth to have its own unique IP address.
In his ISSCC keynote address, De Man said Moore's Law scaling can only go so far. He called for a "more-than-Moore" strategy, the cost-effective integration of CMOS with MEMS, optical and passive components, new materials, biosilicon interfaces, autonomous energy sources and grain-size 3D packaging.
Complexity rests not in the number of transistors but in combining technologies with networking architectures to obtain simple sensor nodes. These microwatt devices are low-duty-cycle, low-throughput microsystems that unify a design into a single package: sensor, signal conditioning, A/D conversion, signal processing, a power-aware MAC layer, antennas, energy management and energy scavenging.
IMEC has developed a 1.4-cm3 2.4GHz sensor based on laminate packaging of bare dies, a solar-cell battery charger and an integrated antenna, De Man said. The system consumes 500 microwatts at 400 bits/s and has a 1 percent duty cycle. For true energy scavenging, only solar cells, piezoelectric MEMS and thermal generators have proven successful, but their average power capacity is limited to 100 microWatts/cm3.
[EE Times]
4:52:59 PM
|
|
| Wednesday, February 09, 2005 |
|
Technoskeptic Techie
There have always been dissenters from the digital revolution: technoskeptics who have raised red flags about the degree to which computer technology rules our lives. Arrayed against them have been the geeks who have mostly been cheerleaders for a fully digital future. But these days, voices of dissent are beginning to emerge from the computer industry itself. Some high-level techies are questioning the value of the very genies whose lamps they've rubbed.
[Utne]
"
But Levy's critique goes a lot deeper than this relatively familiar harried-and-buried scenario. He believes that computing is destabilizing the forms in which we have traditionally received information, and that this process is destabilizing us. He cites philosopher Ernest Becker, who wrote The Denial of Death in 1974. Faced with the literal senselessness of our own mortality, Becker believed, we construct "immortality projects" designed to fend off the inevitable. One of these projects is the creation of culture. And for Levy, one of the most important and stable products of culture is the document: the clay tablet, the papyrus, the sheet of paper covered with information.
When he was at PARC, Levy (who is a trained calligrapher) worked on the concept of the computer document -- that thing on our screens that looks like a sheet of paper, and that we read or write on. This concept of documents became an important way that Levy and his colleagues translated the tumultuous, invisible streams of code that really run computers into stable forms that computer users could manipulate.
But in the past 20 years, and with the growth of the Internet, the idea of a stable digital document has grown much stranger. Can something as ephemeral as a blog be a document, even though it might look like one? What about a series of hyperlinks leading us "into" an interactive fiction site? What about a series of interrelated tables in a database?
"
There is truly a new inter-disciplinarity emerging and converging. As the A-list techie bloggers discover the interelationships between politics and art (that stuff they taught over in the Humanities bldg), here is another fine example of a brilliant technologist that helped to create the new "writing paradigm" - stumbling across concepts of Deconstruction (also taught in the Humanities bldg ... in the Critical Theory class.) Beautiful.
11:17:36 PM
|
|
View from the High Ground
An email conversation with Xerox CTO and Innovation Group president Herve Gallaire: ad hoc networks, the digital landfill, constraint-based programming, the digital divide, optical illusions, uncertainty and incompleteness, solid ink and sports.
[Technology Research News]
6:43:49 PM
|
|
| Monday, February 07, 2005 |
|
Sizing Up Complex Webs: Close or Far, Many Networks Look the Same
Researchers have uncovered another similarity in the makeup of complex networks. The Jan. 27 edition of Nature reports that Hernan Makse of the City College of New York and his co-workers have discovered that all blurred networks have connection patterns that are similar to those found on the original network, representing a fractal pattern similar to snowflakes and trees. The networks studied were the World Wide Web, a network of actors who have worked together, networks of proteins with links between those that can connect with one another, and networks of other cellular molecules that have links between molecules that participate in the same biochemical reactions. The researcher used computer analysis to "zoom out" to observe networks from far away, blurring their vision to determine how clusters of nodes were connected. Mathematicians have considered the Web to be infinite dimensional, and have believed such a network could not fit into finite-dimensional space. "They've found something new here, but we don't know yet whether it is a Rosetta stone that will let us translate the mysteries of networks into something we understand," according to Steven Strogatz, a mathematician at Cornell University. University of Notre Dame physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi calls the research a "fundamental advance" and answers a question that "has been bugging us for a while."
[Science News]
9:11:21 PM
|
|
Bluetooth Seeks Entry Into the Sensor Network Market
According to the Bluetooth SIG, their release of the Bluetooth 2.0+EDR standard will give the technology the boost necessary to enter the sensor network market, which puts them in direction competition with ZigBee.
As it enters the sensor network market, Bluetooth will face a formidable, and very active, opponent - the 802.15.4 ZigBee. In-Stat/MDR estimates that the market for 802.15.4 could be as large as 150 million nodes by 2008. Honeywell is developing a system utilizing ZigBee for remote wireless control of large-size building air conditioning systems and lighting. Ember is volume-producing ZigBee ICs for these applications, forecasting shipments of 700,000 units in 2004 and 20 million in 2005. The ZigBee Alliance is not exactly shaking in its boots in the face of Bluetooth's entry into the sensor market. ZigBee supporters point out that their technology can simultaneously connect about 65,000 nodes, and that it can run for 10 years or more from a battery. Bluetooth's advocates say that the difference in the number of simultaneous connections is irrelevant as studies show that most industrial users considering implementing large-scale sensor networks are planning on using 30 to 60 nodes. [The Unofficial Bluetooth Weblog]
7:23:43 PM
|
|
| Saturday, February 05, 2005 |
|
Taking Full Control of Distributed Applications
The IST-funded GeneSys project has developed a middleware framework for generic distributed systems and applications supervision, eliminating the need to apply costly, proprietary, and excessively complex solutions, according to project coordinator Jean-Eric Bohdanowicz with EADS-Space Transportation. GeneSys earned a Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization Euro-SIW 2003 Award for distributed systems simulation, and the second prototype of the architecture was recently submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium in the hope that it could become a standard. Bohdanowicz says GeneSys is capable of supervising all three system layers--system, network, and applications-while the second prototype uses a communication core and agents to sustain the architecture's openness and generic characteristics..
Sourceforge: GeneSysMW
1:09:28 PM
|
|
Little Sensors, Big Bucks
Smart dust networks are being deployed in a number of test projects, just eight years after University of California computer science professor Kris Pister began researching the technology. Supervalu grocery stores use smart dust sensors to monitor the efficiency of their refrigerators, and British Petroleum monitors vibrations on tanker equipment via smart dust networks. Smart dust has moved from the laboratory to the real world in the last year, but costs and standards issues remain unresolved, though the ZigBee Alliance represents one of the largest groups behind smart dust development and is creating the standards that will underlie smart dust radio networks. The market for ZigBee devices is expected to reach 150 million units by 2008, according to In-Stat analyst Joyce Putscher; predicted applications include building control systems that turn off air conditioning in rooms when unoccupied or temperature-sensing chips that guarantee the quality of a bottle of wine to the customer. Science Applications International is researching smart dust networks that could be spread over battlefields and allow military commanders to track the movement of enemy troops. Currently, however, complete smart dust nodes that include sensors and radios cost between $25 and $125. Although there are 30 chip firms targeting the ZigBee market and others specializing in necessary components, industry insiders say companies that can integrate all the analog and digital parts needed for a smart dust mote will be successful. Intel intends to be a smart dust player even though the company has traditionally shied away from low-cost chip markets; Intel Research associate director Hans Mulder says the smart dust market will take several decades to mature, but that it eventually could outsell the CPU market."
9:23:12 AM
|
|
| Sunday, January 30, 2005 |
|
Time to See the Opportunities
"Call it “pervasive,” “ubiquitous,” or “invisible” computing, it will make intelligence as common as electricity. While it remains difficult to quantify the market for invisible computing, analysts now predict that it will reach $675 billion by 2008, and that by 2012 there will be an estimated 16.4 billion networked devices around the world.".
[Technology Review]
10:16:24 AM
|
|
| Saturday, January 29, 2005 |
|
Sensors Everywhere
Wireless sensor-network technology is finding application in fields as diverse as homeland security, remote equipment monitoring, and supply-chain management, and it has the potential to constitute the next multibillion-dollar tech market. Battery-powered sensor "motes" are composed of a circuit board with networking and software, interfaces that read environmental fluctuations, and a wireless radio to transmit this information; furthermore, "mesh networking" software promotes power efficiency by enabling each sensor to activate only when it has to transmit data, and then send that data to neighboring motes rather than to a remote base station. Harbor Research estimates that the population of wireless sensors currently in use could expand from about 200,000 to 100 million between now and 2008, while the worldwide wireless sensor market could be worth more than $1 billion by 2009. The most immediate profits to be realized from the sensor net technology will likely come from replacing corporate operational monitoring systems with wireless sensor nets. A number of challenges must be met in order to create new markets, including the establishment of additional industry standards so software vendors have a unified methodology for compiling data from sensor nodes of disparate manufacture and of varying capability. Another challenge is to insert software in sensors to enhance their selectivity of what data to transmit or to condense data as a power-saving measure. There is also an absence of software tools that can program entire sensor nets in a single instance, while Microsoft researcher Feng Zhao reports that writing software "will probably be a stumbling block between sensors and killer apps.".
[Information Week]
8:04:34 PM
|
|
|
